Wireless communication services have evolved dramatically from the first voice only cellular telephone systems to high-speed digital data networks capable of delivering voice, Internet, and even streaming video content to mobile devices. Users may access wireless communication services using a wide variety of mobile devices, such as mobile phones, personal computers, personal digital assistants, laptops and personal media devices, as well as other types of mobile communication devices. Accordingly, users have come to appreciate and rely upon the mobility provided by wireless communication services.
In a typical wireless environment, the provisioning and delivery of wireless communication services requires many different components. For example, a wireless communication service area can be defined by a radio frequency (RF) pattern generated by RF transmissions from a nearby base transceiver station or base station. The base station is frequently linked to communication networks via a backhaul link. The mobile communication device establishes a communication path via the base station to other communication networks to obtain wireless access to communication services, such as voice, video, and data services.
Many factors can influence the quality of a service session, such as, the radio interface traffic, wireless load, the carrier or signal to noise ratio from nearby base stations, among other things. Increasingly, the mobility of mobile communication devices between adjacent or neighboring base stations, the types of communications of the various mobile communication devices within a base station's cell area (e.g., voice, video streaming or data transferring) and the condition of the backhaul link of a base station may influence the overall quality of a particular service session. For example, a call may be dropped if the backhaul link lacks sufficient capacity for the call session. In another example, a high speed video service may be degraded if the backhaul link is or becomes congested. In another example, a call may be dropped or data transmissions may be degraded as a call is handed over to a base station that becomes overloaded or congested due to the handover.